The first episode of this year could not have started without a tribute to a great guitarist like Julian Bream. Bream is one of the giants of classical guitar and the recent reissue of some of his concerts recorded at the beginning of the '60 is the right opportunity to talk to him and listen to his beautiful guitar. We will listen to: Concerto in A for Guitar and Orchestra by Mauro Giuliani Guitar Concerto Op 67 by Malcolm Arnold, the Sonatina Op 51 by Lennox Berkeley, the Pavane pour une Infante dead by Ravel, Roussel Segovia Op 29 , the Sonata in C minor and the Sonata in A by Cimarosa. These are musics that have long been on the market but not readily available. We are in 1960, Bream is in great shape and is at his best, to hear him play is always a great joy and a thrill.

sabato 29 settembre 2012

Italian TranslationPlease tell us five essential records, to have always with you .. the classic five discs for the desert island ...

Frank Sinatra and the Count Bassie Band Live at the SandsIves Ensemble plays Morton Feldman TRIOAnything with Jose Miguel Moreno on itAnything with Paul O’dette on itU2 The Josua TreeWhat are your five favorite scores?

Franco Donatoni AlgoMorton Feldman The Possibility of New WorkVaundry de Saizenay manuscriptSylvano Bussotti Ultima RaraMaurizio Pisati Sette StudiWhith who would you like to play? What kind of music do you listen to usually?I guess when considering who I would most like to play with I think I would always be considering from whom could I learn the most? Probably Jose Miguel Moreno. Presently I listen almost exclusively to early music but my listening habbits go in cycles.

Your next projects? When we will see you playing in Italy?

I am currently mastering a CD of Latin songs with the English tenor Tyrone Landau and a CD of Australian contemporary music which is a compilation of radio recordings. Andrea Tacchi is currently making me an alto guitar so I may come to Italy early in the new year to pick it up but it terms of concerts I’m not sure. I have a young family so at present I travel very little.The last question …. the Blog is read by several students .. any good advices to give them?Listen very widely, try to find a new avenue to explore in your repertoire and in terms of technique work towards the most tension free approach. Playing as much chamber music as possible is crucial though. Not only will it sharpen your performance skills in an absolutly essential manner but will also put you in contact with working musicians!

Italian TranslationI have realy enjoyed your recording about the guitar music by Aldo Clementi, how did it happens to you to record those music and how is your relationship between Mode Records?

My wife was studying lute with Paul Beier in Milano during 2001 and I came over and spent three months with her in Italy. I had played many works by Clementi both chamber and guitar pieces and wanted to play to him while in Europe. Gabriele Bonomo heard my CD ‘In Flagranti’ and was instrumental in putting me in touch with Aldo and helping me commission him for a new solo work. When I returned to Australia I recorded the solo peices on the back of other more commercial projects through the Australian Broadcasting Commission. Daryl Buckley from Elision was very helpful and he organised the chamber recordings including a piece Elision had commissioned from Aldo back in 1992 and he also took the recording to Mode.Aldo is a masterful composer and such a fantastic ‘thinker’ on music. Many of his views on modern music I share. Soon I have an article on his music coming out in Contemporary Music Review for those interested.

I have, sometimes, the feeling that in our times music’s history flows without a particular interest in its chronological course, in our discoteque before and after, past and future become interchangeable elements, shall this be a risk of a uniform vision for an interpreter and a composer? The risk of a musical "globalization"?

I don’t think we are really in risk of a kind of artistic ‘globalization’ in our field because it is already so far outside the mainstream of popular music practice. In some ways being almost irrelevant or at best hidden from the wider musical public allows a certain freedom in terms of direction, interpretation etc. On the plus side things like the internet have made communication so easy and this can be great in the exchange of ideas and especially so in education. Growing up in Melbourne meant that I very rarely got to see top artists perform live but now I can just send my students to Youtube to hear and see great players.

Luciano Berio writes "the preservation of the past has a negative sense, as it becomes a way of forgetting music. The listener will get an illusion of continuity that allows you to select what seems to confirm that same continuity and censor everything that seems disturbino”, What role can take music and contemporary composers in this context?

In terms of programming recitals I now prefer the idea of mixing different musical era in a recital because here in Australia the audience for specialist new music events has really dwindled for notated contemporary music but has grown a lot for improvised music. I think by very careful programming an artist can illuminate the musical continuity that Berio spoke of. In terms of expanding our knowledge of disturbing elements to the musical cannon, those elements can be the most exciting areas to explore but this takes knowledge of performance practice, musical history and the ability to be accross the repertoire in a way that was previously not required by many performers.What do you think about the discographic market crisis, with the transition to digital downloading in mp3 and all this new scenario?

Well mp3 could be a good thing but I still really like the older format in terms of the information in programme notes and the artistic aspect in packaging the disc. I understand the issues with illegal downloading though and who knows what the result of this will be long term.

giovedì 27 settembre 2012

Italian TranslationWhat does improvisation mean for your music research? Do you think it’s possibile to talk about improvisation for classical music or we have to turn to other repertories like jazz, contemporary music, etc.?.?

I use improvisation a lot in my teaching and I am very interested in improvisation in early music but I am not so interested in improvisation in new music or ‘free’ music only because I have heard a lot of it and it seems a field in which doing it is a lot more interesting than listening to it in most cases. Having said that I love the CD of Pat Methany and Derek Bailey live together. But coming back to early music I love the use of improvisation or division as it now rememerging amongst lutenists and others. It allows for a very personal performance.

Listening to your music, I noticed the quiet serenity with which you approach your instrument regardless of repertoire, from whom you are playing, the composer, the instrument that you use always showing full control both technical and emotional, how much important is to work on technique to achieve this level of "security"?

The guitar is a very ‘technique’ heavey isntrument. You need to be on top of and always open to development. I don’t think the technique I now have is even remotely related to the technique i learnt from my teachers. It comes from playing chamber music...having a good conductor point out things about your playing...projecting within a mixed ensemble...accompanying a good singer. These things push you. There are some guitarist in Australia who are completly obsessed with technique though. To the point of a kind of vanity overiding musical expression and purpose. Anyway if I have a goal in technique it is to be able to change and adapt to the repertoire and the instrument I am playing.

It Seems to me that there is a small music scene about classical guitarists dedicated to an innovative and contemporary repertoire, as well as you come to my mind the names of Marco Cappelli, David Tanenbaum, David Starobin, Elena Casoli, Emanuele Forni, Marc Ribot who played John Zorn music ... shall I speak about a music scene? Are you in contact between each other or operate independently? Are there other guitarists you know and that you can suggest us that they move on these musical routes?

I have had a lot of contact with Elena Casoli. In fact I organised a concert for her here in Melbourne. It was great and she is a terrific player. Seth Josel is a great player who works mainly with the electric guitar and Jurgen Ruck of course. There are lots of good players of new music now which is as it shoud be. Because I am on the other side of the planet though means I am very isolated which is at times a big problem. My new music practice in Australia has nothing to do with the guitar scene here. In fact I lead two quite seperate lives!You have played with Maurizio Pisati for his Teathre of Dawn, what do you remember about that experience?

I have been playing Maurizio’s music since 1993 when he composed Dercialet for Elision. I have played his sette studio, arrangements of music by Scarlatti and Sciarino and heaps of other chamber works three with film accompaniment. He is a really interesting composer and I think one of the few who have really combined compositional technique and skill with a truly indiginous understanding of the gutiar. His “Theatre of Dawn” is a wonderful work and needs to be presented in a major festival and given some real support and i believe the audience for the work could be excellent.

mercoledì 26 settembre 2012

The first question is always the classic one: how does it start your love and interest for guitar and what instruments do you play or have you played?

Like so many guitarists of my generation I was first attracted to the guitar through Rock music. In fact I played rock or jazz up until my 18th birthday and only then did I have the chance to study classical guitar. I think I didn’t learn to read music until i was 16 years old. I did study piano as a young child but I hated it. These days I play baroque guitar, 19th century guitar, modern classical guitar and very occassionally, the electric guitar.What was your musical training, with which teachers have you studied and what impression they left in your music?

I was very lucky to study at the Victorian College of the Arts with Jochen Schubert who was a classical guitarist who emigrated from Germany to Australia in the late 1960’s. He gave me a real passion for exploring the instruments repertoire in a very broad way and he had a much better attitude to new music than most classical guitarists. Once I finished my degree I went to Europe and took lessons in new music from Stefano Cardi in Rome and Magnus Andersson in Stockholm. They were very different musicians and it was quite a culture shock for a 21 year old. I think in many ways I have learnt the most though through being an avid listener of recorded music of all genres and by being a constant researcher of texts written on the guitar from the renaissance on.

How did stat your interest about the contemporary repertoire, and what are the stylistic currents in which you recognize yourself most?

As a student Leo Brouwer’s studies were a great eye and ear opener. From there I went to the recodings of Julian Bream particularly the Royal Winter Music by Hans Werner Henze. After a few years I managed to start working with the Elision Ensemble and this brought me in contact with the music of Franco Donatoni and of the English modernists such as Brian Ferneyhough. I’m not sure in what ‘current’ I recognise myself although I certainly feel very far removed from the new romantics or at least those composers who seem to so well exploit the growing gulf between new music and the audience by writing psuedo- pop music.

Berio in his essay "A remembrance to the future," wrote: ".. A pianist who is a specialist about classical and romantic repertoire, and plays Beethoven and Chopin without knowing the music of the twentieth century, it is also off as a pianist who is specialist about contemporary music and plays with hands and mind that have never been crossed in depth by Beethoven and Chopin. " You play both traditional classical and contemporary repertoire ... do you recognize yourlsef in these words?Early on in my playing career I only played new music. I think it is really bad for performers and now my interests are so broad that it can at times lead to a kind of paralysis through too many choices. I no longer want to play recitals which are only new music at least not at the present. The idea of study, research and following a consistent musical journey is in many ways more improtant to me than performance. I think the idea of playing a broad repertoire represents a desire on the part of the artist to experience the full history and breadth of their repertoire.Let’s talk about marketing. How much do you think it’s important for a modern musician? I mean: how much is crucial to be good promoters of themselves and their works in music today?

Well I’m terrible with this. The website I have was part of a prize I was awarded but I’m sure that self-promotion is probably crucial at least to those who are trying to perform all the time. There will be musicians who are better at promotion than playing! But I guess that we have to hope that quality wins out in the end.

We talked about the Australian guitarist Geoffrey Morris during the interview with Maurizio Pisati as involved in his Teathre of a Dawn’s project, now we meet him again in this monographic CD released on Mode Records in 2007, entirely devoted to the music for guitar by Aldo Clementi, Genoese composer born in 1925, pupil of Goffredo Petrassi and friend of Bruno Maderna. The compositions recorded here cover a span of 25 years, from 1978's Fantasia su frammenti di Michelangelo Galilei, originally for lute and revived here for guitar by permission of Clementi, to the Otto Variazioni of 2002, written and dedicated to the same Morris. Only those here cited, along with Twelve Variations composed in 1992, are for solo guitar while the others on the disc like Serenade of 1988, Albumblatt of 1995, CAG 1993 and The Plaint of 1992 are provide for mixed ensemble.

Musically, listening to this record is not the simplest thing and it’s necessari to approach it step by step, slowly letting that the delicate structures of the music of Clementi and the skills of the musicians conquer us, little by little, then their poetry and their spatiality will speak clearly outlining a new world of sound, made of calm interwoven sound and subtle dynamics. Mode Records to be congratulated for the fine quality of the recording and the handsome 24-page booklet that accompanies it, beautiful and intense the black and white photo on the cover of Clementi.

lunedì 24 settembre 2012

The Australian guitarist Geoffrey Morris performs both traditional and contemporary music with a repertoire which extends from the 16th century to the present day. His interest in performance practices has led Geoffrey to the exploration of early guitars as well as championing the works of contemporary composers working in all genres.

To date Geoffrey has premiered, commissioned or recorded over two hundred new works with composers Elena Kats Chernin (Aust.),Brian Ferneyhough (UK), Aldo Clementi (It.) and Horatiu Radulescu (Romania) among just some who have dedicated works to him.

He has introduced new music to Australian audiences by John Cage (USA), Luca Francesconi (Italy), James Dillon (UK) and Toshio Hosokawa (Japan). For fifteen years he was been a member of the internationally acclaimed ELISION Ensemble with whom he premiered new chamber works by Franco Donatoni (Italy), Helen Gifford (Aust.) Chaya Czernowin (Israel), Maurizio Pisati (Italy) and Gerard Brophy (Aust.). The recently released a cd Terrain included two new works by Brian Ferneyhough with guitar,Les Froissements des Ailes de Gabriel and No Time (at all) received the July 2010 Editors Choice in Gramophone magazine.

With Libra Ensemble he has performed many of the most important works in the twentieth-century repertoire including those by Gerhard, Boulez, Stravinsky, Webern and Crumb. Geoffrey has accompanied some of Australia’s finest singers including Jane Edwards, Tyrone Landau and Deborah Kayser and in 2007 accompanied Luciano Pavarotti with the Melbourne Symphony as part of the singer’s farewell tour.

In recent years Geoffrey has also embraced the performance of the nineteenth-century solo and lieder repertoire performing this work on period instruments and copies. He has performed with many leading Australian and international ensembles and individuals including the Gavin Bryars Ensemble, the Song Company, guitarist Norio Sato (Melbourne Festival), Ensemble Modern (Adelaide Festival), Ensemble 21 (New York City), Paul Grabowsky, Black Arm Band and Aphids.

Geoffrey has given solo performances in Italy, Germany, Denmark, England, Ireland, U.S.A, Norway, New Zealand, Japan and Holland as well as throughout Australia. His awards include a Queens Trust Achievers Award, Best Solo Performance at the Sydney Spring festival (2000), Winston Churchill Memorial Fellowship and most recently the 2004 Music Council of Australia/ Freedman Fellowship for Classical Music.

Geoffrey is a graduate of the Victorian College of the Arts and gained a Masters Degree from the University of Melbourne. In early July 2007 his Doctoral Thesis on contemporary guitar performance practice was approved by the University of Newcastle where he studied with the support of an Australian Postgraduate Award. From 2006 to 2009, he was been a member of the Guitar Faculty at the University of Melbourne.

Geoffrey’s debut solo CD In Flagranti was released on ABC Classics (ABC 465 701-2) to widespread critical acclaim. He has previously recorded on the Etcetera (Holland) and Vox Australis, Move and Mode (USA) labels. He has had his work broadcast on ABC FM, ABC Television, BBC Radio 3, Danish Radio 2, WNYC (New York), Radio Bremen, and the Deutschlandfunk, (Cologne). A CD of the guitar works by the Italian composer Aldo Clementi was released in late June 2007 on the prestigious New York record label Mode Records.

Among the composers who most linked their image to the music for guitar we may certainly recalled Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco. Born in Florence in 1895, he showed since he was young a remarkable musical talent, becoming in the thirties one of the best known and appreciated Italian composers, whose works were performed by musicians like of Toscanini, Piatigorsky, Casella, Heifetz, Gieseking and Segovia, it was the friendship with the last one to create in him a love for the guitar, an instrument which, in recent years, he wrote the most intimate and autobiographical music of his career. Career that he was forced to continue in the United States where he moved in 1939 because of racial laws promulgated by the Fascist regime.
This CD gives us the opportunity to enjoy a broad spectrum of his music, focusing our attention on his compositions for chamber music. It begins with the Quintetto op.143, composed in 1950 and dedicated to Andres Segovia, performed here with the Solisti di Roma. It’s a melodic and serene music, in four movements, partly neoclassical and partly neoromantic, whit evident influences from Spain.
Then we have Romancero Gitano, recorded with the Ensamble Vocalese perfect example of an inedited combination of choir and guitar. Born at the request of guitarist Siegfried Behrendnel in 1951, this music offers to Arturo Tallini the possibility to create with his guitar a sound carpet for the beautiful verses of Lorca (who, despite of the title, are not got from the collection Poema del Cante jondo of 1921/1925), harmonically and rhythmically coloring the seven songs. These are seven beautiful songs and I would point out to the gentle beauty of "Memento."
In combination with the piano we find the Fantasia op. 145, always dedicated to Segovia and his wife Paquita Madriguera, here performed with Tiziana Piermattei. Nice music with impressionist and Spanish colors, which is characterized by the significant balance achieved between two instruments seemingly antithetical to each other by their own nature. For guitar and flute are the three movements of Sonatina op.205, composed in 1965 for the duo formed by flutist Werner Tripp and guitarist Konrad Ragossnig, one of the most popular works of his repertoire, where we can find the most lyrical aspects of the composer. This work is not so easy to play due to the virtuosistic skills required to the performers, here is performed with great melodic spontaneity showing an irresistible charm. Last but not least the Ecloghe op. 206, played with Carlo Morena on flute and Francesco Manfrin on English horn. Designed for a rather unusual ensemble the four Ecloghe are characterized by a happy timbre intuition which every instrument integrates itself perfectly into the overall musical discourse. The trio managed with considerable grace and finesse to show the sense of nostalgia felt by the composer for Italy, feeling expressed with the evocation of dance music and melodies of italian traditional musical culture.
Definitely a great disc that will make you spend happy moments and poignant melancholy.

Is it possibile to love risk? Shall musicians decide to renew themselves, completely? Shall they accept to leave a well known path and, with almost serene unconsciousness accept to role the dice again and start every time a new musical deal towards unusual and different scorse far away from a well-established classical tradition?
These are the questions that show up in my mind while I was listening to this CD dedicated to the figure of Garcia Lorca and to his poems, played in a surprising way by Arturo Tallini on guitar and Ada Montellanico, voice . Federico Garcia Lorca is one of the greatest Spanish poets of the twentieth century and he represents the point of conjunction between music, literature and Iberian popular culture.
Anti fascism symbol, he experienced a particular moment in history and art full of cultural and political contradictions. Garcia Lorca, passionate guitarist and of traditional poetic forms, composed the Canciones Populare Espanoles like a mix of popular and innovative and in this cd they get a new light thanks to new transcription for guitar made by Arturo Tallini.

This music shows a great deeep sensitivity, it speaks a famous and valuable language, the voice that plays, fights, moves in counterpoint to the guitar. A game of subtle bilance, of hidden dynamics and fascinating chant. The refined and expressive voice of Ada Montellanico joins the color of the voice of the guitar of Arturo Tallini creating a kaleidoscope that will easily fascinate you. The result is an excellent CD in which there are also some music by the English composer, conductor and guitarist Reginald Smith Brindle (born January 5 1917, died September 9 2003), from El Polifemo de Oro and composed in 1956 for Julian Bream, and a piece by Stefania Tallini, well known jazz pianist, entitled Deseo and composed especially for this duo. One more praise for the quality recording: being able to record and combine together two particolar voices like the one by Ada Montellanico and the guitar of Arturo Tallini, keeping their dynamics and colors should not have been an easy job.

martedì 18 settembre 2012

In 2000 Luca Adinolfi, one of the more rated Italian DJ, wrote an interesting and amazing book " Mondo Exotica: Sounds, Visions, Obsessions of the Cocktail Generation", a bright analysis of the "exotica" phenomenon: the recovery in the 90’s years of some exotic musics played during the Fifty and Sixty closer to the Hawaii, the stripteases, the rites of the cocktail, to the spicier filmworks, to the spies.movies.. musics considered once for an "adult" public and in contrast to rock n’ roll played by the newborn marketing "teenagers"category. Involved although in the "Cocktail Generation"’s phenomenon are also some Italian composers of filmworks for wester, b-movies, police and soft-erotic movies, people trained to the conservatory that found a remunerative job making their art and musical ideas available for the the dawning Italian cinema industry (Cinecittà), people like Ennio Morricone, Luis Enriquez Bacalov, Peter Umiliani, Riz Ortolani, Charles Rustichelli and Armando Trovajoli.
Names that sings in this excellent "The American Dream" played by the Surf’s Italian Academy of the guitarist Marco Cappelli. Ironic, joky and at the same time monstrously serious in his way to play Cappelli has wanted to pay tribute to these composers and their music, that in last times have been rediscovered after years of sad forgetfulness and obscurantism, with a delicious record. Anything else other than Beach Boys, Brian Wilson you can hide yourself again, here he plays Seriously! The italian academy that accompanies him: Francesco Cusa on the drums, Luca Lo Bianco on bass and Gaia Mattiuzzi, voice, doesn't fear comparisons with the Californian surf’s tables and the waves.
This is a funny cd that has a good time but ago also makes you to think about. Cappelli with his Gretsch vintage guitar returns to the "surf" sound of the '50 and '60 but he does it decidedly with a contemporary formulation, no easy licks, no winks but an interesting and intelligent readjourned proposal.
Now excuse me, but Jack, Matt and Leroy by " Big Wednesday " and the colonel Kilgore by "Apocalypse Now" are waiting for me for a last barbecue on the beach….

sabato 15 settembre 2012

In music, transcription is the act to select the main melody of a piece (for orchestra or solo instrument) and transcribe it precisely for a different instrument or ensemble. This practice was used a lot in the past but during the ‘900 has been characterized by a new meaning being not only used to create a simple alternative version of the piece but a new total rewrite of it. In this sense a perfetc example is the music Pictures at an Exhibition by Modest Mussorgsky arranged by Maurice Ravel, whose spirit blows gently benevolently on this cd.
The Trio Concentus, formed by three excellent soloists as Vincenzo Di Benedetto, Stefano Palamidessi and Arturo Tallini, moves in this direction creating a valuable recording where they rearrange Pictures at an Exhibition by Mussorgsky and three works by Ravel: Le Tombeau de Couperin, Pavane pour une Infante Defunte and Alborada del grazioso.
The Trio play these works without trying any orchestral effects, everything is based on the ability of the three guitars to cover (through the use of different tunings and of a bass guitar tuned a fifth below) covering the same musical extension of the piano that here is taken as reference. No shocking effects therefore, no special effects, no recording‘s tricks, but "only" the ability of three great musicians and a recording made with a great dynamic sound.
Those who is looking for special effects will be disappointed, those who are seeking the simple "nudity" of the music will be enchanted, the Trio Concentus shows a great example of virtuosity never end in itself, releasing a powerful and majestic sound. A great tribute to two composers whose music of the'900 owes so much. Listen to this disk, you will enjoy perfect moments of excitement and serenity.

In her interview published here on the blog in these days I asked to Elena Càsoli what was hes relationship with tradition and if she played classical pieces in her repertoire. Hes answer showed her relationship with this repertoire in terms of musical and cultural education, showing the link between the study of the tradition and her personal approach to contemporary music. So it’s been with great pleasure that I managed to find this cd made in 1994 with the venetian label Rivo Alto. I think that peple who read this blog (expecially the italian site of Chitarra e Dintorni knows my admiration for the music of Elena Càsoli and therefore will not be surprised by my positive review of this cd. This is an anthology of studies (54 to be exact) featuring the works by Opus 48, 50, 51, 100 and 111 by mauro Giuliani played with great skill and art, 54 musical sketces, musical dreams or dream fragments in sound shape. Elena Càsoli succeeds in creating magical moments of suspension and colorful auroras in which the listener is immersed up, completely loosing himself in the pleasure of the relaxing music by Mauro Giuliani.
I think this is an essential cd for those who plays by themself without a teacher and want to hear a perfect versions of these studies, and a strategically important recording for those who have always seen these musics as simple exercises or borino studies and wants to rediscover them in a new, shining light.

"I think that it’s important to study a particular repertoire or composer, as much as it’s important for every musician to develop an elastic and flexible way of thinking, that shall permit him, to be able to move, I will not say through different styles – an ability that only few artists may have - but through different authors of the same style, enriching their own interpretative perspective and keeping the highest artistic quality." Elena Càsoli

With this record Pablo Montagne confirms to be one of the most interesting guitarists in absolute on the scene of the contemporary music. This new "Cordale", produced by the italian label Setola di Maiale this year, is simply an exceptional cd for ideas, creativeness, inventiveness and attitude to the risk.
It deals with seventeen compositions, the first ten for classical guitar and the remainders seven for acoustic guitar, characterized by a development of melodic lines and self propelled rhythms, mutable rhythms, mutable melodies, swarming texture. The goal for Motagne is to produce an independent sonorous material, indipendent by (as far as possible) the same instrumentalists through the combination of various procedures... "it’s like if someone try to surprise his own shade " as the same Pablo he wrote in Setola di Maiale’s website. The result is Cordale: a flow, a stream of consciousnes sound, torrential, constituted by continuous micro variations and micro movements, a result also gotten with the help of new tunings and where the guitar classical mounts only light E strings, that make also the sound more uniform and similar to an harpsichord.
An extremely experimental job, but of great, big interest. I sincerely invite all guitarists interested to the contemporary guitar to appraise the purchase of this cd and to be in contact with Pablo Montagne to be able to appraise his scores.
For the fetishists, the cd has been recorded with a classical guitar realized by Luciano Lovadina and an acoustic guitar EKO modified by Peter Pasca.